


hiding from the beginning

by Spurandsaddle



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, OC death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:42:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spurandsaddle/pseuds/Spurandsaddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the prompt: "what if an elf was raised by humans"</p>
            </blockquote>





	hiding from the beginning

 

He is never told how mama came about him, only that is a miracle. He supposes it must be, mama is the best person in the world. She is large and soft and kind. She tells him stories and consoles him when the other children mock his ears. They mock that he has no father as well, but that does not bother him. He is adopted, because mama loved him so much she took him and made him hers. He ignores them all. Their little house is tiny, one room with a tiny table and a hearth and two little sleeping mats and a tiny barn outside for animals skirting the forest he must never go into. His mother is a jolly woman with red hair and a smile. There is only one thing that makes her frown at him, not the lord mayor, not her long day’s work, but elves. Mama knows much about spirits and trolls and she explained how there is nothing more dangerous to a young boy than elves. They are nasty spirits who come and steal children and eat them. Whenever elves come along the road beside the village he runs and squirms under the woodpile until mama says it’s safe to come out. He doesn’t mind much, there is all sorts of weird worms and bugs under the woodpile.

* * *

 

He barely fits under the woodpile any more. He is around 25 and all of his friends have grown up and have children. He still looks like a boy. He hates hiding under the woodpile, he is too big to be hiding under a woodpile, but if he doesn’t Mama panics and cries when she finally finds him.

He wonders how awful the elves he spotted from a distance one day can be, he doesn't think about how if they had shorter hair, and cheap peasants clothing like his, maybe they would look familiar. Familiar like Mama and the Lord Mayor. People whisper but he can hear them anyway. Hear how they say that Mama and the Lord Mayor have the same red hair, the same eyes.

The town whispers about Mama all the time. About how Mama is putting them in danger, that the elves will come and be mad. He can't hear them from their little house on the edge of town. Their words don't reach him there.

 

A girl in town begins to follow him everywhere asking questions. Where did he come from? How come mama took him? What is he doing? How does he do that? He learns her name is Anya and she is eight. He asks why she follows him. She says it’s because he’s weird. She asks his name and he tells her it is Haldrian.

* * *

 

He is too big to hide under the wood pile any more. Now if word of the elves comes he simply walks away into the woods and looses himself among the trees. He talks to them, and sometimes he thinks he can hear them talk back. The trees ask many questions, like why he lives with humans and not with the elves. He asks them many questions, about the forest and the stars. The trees sometimes answer. Sometimes they say he should ask the elves.

He knows now that the elves are not spirits, but he still believes they may take him away. He has seen them from afar and has realized why his mother was afraid she would lose him. They may still take him; he looks like a youth still even though his childhood playmates now have children.

He and Anya explore most of the woods, avoiding town and the Lord Mayor’s grandson who has begun sniffing around Anya like a dog. Haldrian wants to punch the Lord Mayor’s grandson in his stupid ginger face. Anya reminds him that both their homes are owned by the Lord Mayor, there is nothing to be done. Instead they wander the forest and Haldrian introduces Anya to his favorite trees. Over the years some have learned to shake their branches when he talks to them. When he introduces Anya, the trees seem sad, instead of encouraging him to climb up, they just sit, perfectly still. He asks them what can be done to keep the Lord Mayor's grandson away from Anya. They don't reply. They don't understand, but they are sad with him. 

In fall, mama’s joints become bad. She is well and truly old, blind and mostly deaf, but then she cannot even rise on her own. The walks in the woods stop. Haldrian spends his time cooking, and cleaning, and making her comfortable. He spends hours stroking her frail hands and feeling like his insides are rotting. The trees are quieter now, the few times he goes out. They have less answers about his mother than they had about Anya. He tries to tell himself he doesn't care. They only talk about the elves now anyway, with an increasing desperation and persistence that ruins any visit.

A pattern develops and Anya stops by with soups and bread and chatter nearly every afternoon. She tidies up and watches mama when Hardian has to go out and chop wood or care for the animals or help bring in the last of the crops. Soon she is there nearly morning to night. People start to gossip and rib him, talking nonsense about sweet young love. Anya's father, a carpenter too busy to watch after his brood ever before, stops him in the street and awkwardly tells him he has no dowery for Anya, that he doesn't want to lead Haldrian on, but he could take Haldrian on. He could become a craftsman, instead of just a farmer. Everyone seems to forget that he used to play with their grandparents as children. It makes him uncomfortable, he was a youth when Anya was born and he is still a youth now that Anya has become a maiden. But Haldrian thinks about the Lord Mayor's son, about what everyone said about his mother's red hair and wonders if this would protect Anya.

One day Anya shows up crying, her wrists are bruised and her dress is wrinkled and Haldian goes for his sword. She asks him what he thinks he can do against the Lord Mayor? What will they do if he forces them to leave? What if he kills Haldrian? What will mama do? He holds her as she cries and tries to keep his own sorrow in. He remembers a tree in the forest, how it rotted till you could flake the wood away with your fingers, how bugs and ants made homes in it. He feels powerless, like the tree, who can't stop the Lord Mayor's son, he feels like there are bugs and ants in his stomach. If he had asked her to marry him would it have saved her? Would she have been spared?

The routine resumes. Anya stops by, sometimes with soup, and sometimes with tears. The happy little house becomes quiet. He strokes Mama's white hair and thinks about how it used to be red. 

One day Anya comes by and says she is with child. She comes with tears and wild eyes. Mama, who can barely stand, swoops up and gathers Anya in her arms. She promises that everything will be okay. The rot in his stomach tells him otherwise.

 

They wed three days later. It is a tense and tight affair, everyone knows why weddings happen so quickly, but all assume it was Haldrian. He cannot correct them. Anya's father stops by the night before with ale and orders him to sit down. He gives Haldrian a piece of his mind. Then he pours him a drink and tells him that since he doesn't have a father, he will make this speech to Haldian instead, though he guesses Haldrian figured some of it out on his own.

No matter how much of the ale Haldrian drinks he does not get drunk, though his ears do flush. He wonders about the rot inside of him, everything Anya's father mentions makes the rot wiggle. That he doesn't want to do this with Anya, that he can't. Some part of him knows that what he is talking about is so much more. He thinks that if he has sex with Anya the rot may consume him, it may kill him. He can marry her, but not be a husband. The thought makes the rot grow inside. He feels like it is devouring his soul. Like little bits of himself and being turned into dirt. Anya is his only friend though, and he will protect her. 

* * *

 

The house is never quiet. Horden is 3 and runs everywhere. He toddles through the market, making vendors and neighbors laugh and curse. He runs through the house, the last thing that brings a twinkle to mama’s veiled eyes and makes her hand twitch before Horden gently pulls it towards him and presses a treasure into it. Haldrian brings him everywhere, teaches him everything the child can stand to learn. The rot in his body eases, he feels grounded. Every utterance of "papa" is like a salve for a wound he could never reach. The child's red hair flashes like a beacon and Haldrian can spot it from several hills over.

Once Anya's father had seen it he had dragged Haldrian to his workshop and cried. The offer of apprenticeship was renewed and accepted. Haldrian spends his days carving, sawing, and building. His skill grows quickly and one day even the Lord Mayor's son walks in and asks for a chest to be built. A glory chest for his new daughter. The whole interaction Haldrian stares at the man's hair. 

Horden grows so fast he feels like he blinks and the child is taller. He starts to save money, hidden behind the hearth so Horden may learn to read and write, perhaps one day Horden could even teach him.

No one mentions Horden’s red hair to Haldrian’s face, but his ears were better than most’s and men are louder than they mean to be in taverns, the rare times he is dragged out by the other craftsmen near his workshop. Red hair like his mother's... like the Lord Mayor's, and his son's. The village has grown since he was little, yet they gossip all the same. He tries to ignore it, to drink his ale and be merry, but the rot ripples.

He and Anya had tried to be true man and wife after Horden was born. A tense dinner and a few kisses fell flat. They retired to bed only to lie on opposite sides not touching each other. He knew they were both secretly relieved.

In the winter mama caught a cough that wracked her whole body and made her wheeze. Anya fretted and sent Horden to live with her father, where sickness was not. Haldrian spent 2 days hunting and skinning any furred animal he could find, trying to ward off her chill, until a group of elves came along the road, going where ever elves go. For once he does not retreat into the woods, but stands to the side just out of sight. They said there were great healers among the elves, witches who could bring back the dead. He stood there, rocking back and forth, weighing the promises of legend against his mother’s old warnings ringing in his head. He dallied until it was too late and the elves were gone. 

 

Mama died. They buried her, and when he folded her hands over her chest Haldrian felt the rot return, and it did not ease. He found himself wandering the hills that winter, searching for something.

Something that made more sense than death.

* * *

 

Horden develops the cough when he is 11. This time there are no elves on the road.  When the healer says nothing more can be done Anya holds Horden’s shaking body and Haldrian holds them both. When Horden goes still, the little rotten thing in Haldrian cracks and leaks all over him. Haldrian says nothing at the funeral, he moves when prompted.  He punches the Lord Mayor in his stupid ginger face when he asks Horden’s name. He feels like his soul is leaking out and that rotten thing is filling him up. He feels like there is somewhere he should go.

“Where would you go?” Anya asks, weary and heartbroken.

Haldrian has no answer. He does not know. Just somewhere. It tugs gently at him when he is most tired.

 

He wanders. Through the forest he and Anya explored when they were younger, all the way to the other side. The plains beyond it, skirting around the little shire. He climbs little mountains and explores a very grumpy forest. He runs from orcs, and hides from elves and men and all other creatures. Each time he returns to the village it is a little shorter before he leaves again. Each time he returns Anya is a little older and a little drunker. One time he returns and finds that Anya's father has died. That the woodshop no longer has a bench for him. That Anya works in the new Lord Mayor's house instead. The money hidden behind the hearth goes to the brewer for his son to go to school. Time passes.

One day he wanders until he comes upon a sea. He feels something yank where he thought everything was dead. He stands knee deep in the sea for days. He loses time. He still doesn’t know where he is going, but he knows it is on the other side of this sea.

When he returns he realizes he has been gone for 6 years. Anya says nothing when he walks through the door.  Only serves him thin soup and sits across from him in silence.

No one in the village says anything to his face, but his hearing is better than most and men speak louder than they mean to in a tavern.

 

He goes home and sits in front of Anya, who ignores him and darns socks. He apologizes with everything he has, she cries, and he stays. He feels broken and pulled towards the sea so hard he feels he is about to be torn in half... but he stays.

 

* * *

 

Over time Anya’s hair turns silver. Haldrian’s own features filled out long ago, now he simply looks untouched by time.  One day he looks up and realizes she is the same age as his mother when she died, though she is in far fairer health. He avoids the ocean and everything to do with it. Even so he catches himself staring into the distance, like he is trying to listen for something, someone calling him.

They all died in the winter. He is out feeding the animals when he hears her screaming. He runs to the house and bursts into mayhem.  Her skirt has caught fire.  She thrashes and rolls, her shrieks deafening him as he grabs their sleeping mat and attempts to smother the fire with it. The small table flips, mama’s chair breaks, smoke fills the room, the fire goes out. He carries her wimpering out to the barn and runs for the healer. She is dead by the time he returns.

He dies at the touch of her dead hand, burnt and ruined, leaking liquid like the rot leaking from his every pore. He wonders how he doesn't look like Anya. He sends the healer home. He brings Anya into the house and crosses her arms over her chest on their scorched sleep mat. He burns the house with her inside. Neighbors come running with buckets, but when they hear what has happened from the healer, they stand and watch instead. Some cry. Some whisper. No one tries to come to him. He is alone. These are not his people, his village. His people are dead. These are the people who whispered about Mama, and Anya, and Horden and himself. Who do nothing about the Lord Mayor (he does nothing about the Lord Mayor) He slaughters the pigs and the goats and leaves the meat at the neighbor’s house, along with his horse. He goes sits on the road.

The next morning, things in the village have reset from the chaos of the night before. The mourning routine begins. People bring him food, they bring him water, they say things, but he does not hear them. He sits in the road. Even the rotting thing is leaking out of him now. He sits and waits. They keep bringing food, someone covers him with a waterproof cloak. He sits. A week passes. He feels the rot leaking out, leaving him empty. He feels the ocean pull it all out of him. He is too tired to care. He is one hundred and twenty some years old, and he supposes he is dying.

The elves come. The first in the train stop abruptly, staring at him with wide eyes. He stares back dully. They have finally seen him. He wonders what they see. His dirty short hair? His filthy rainlogged burlap clothes?

They do not look real, though when they rush to him and say strange words they feel real enough. Elves surround him on all sides and they are calling back along their train, calling people forward. 

“I’m tired.” He tells them in his common plain tongue. One, dressed in a long robe grabs his face to inspect him. He realizes he may have been burned as well. Or maybe the rot is pouring out of him. Maybe the elves can see it. The one inspecting him looks panicked. He turns and shouts words to the others with authority. They pick him up. Some yell. They keep talking to him in babbling words he doesn’t understand. Someone hauls him onto the floor of a cart and gently strokes his face.

He closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep, hoping that they will take him with them and that they are going where he needs to go.

 

 


End file.
